Another Sky
by whatthefoucault
Summary: Dan and Jones and what they do after New York.  Exciting times.  Eleven chapters of mayhem, laughs, some sex, idiots, legal hassles, and stretchy maternity-waistband jeans.
1. Chapter 1

**Disclaimer**: I own an out-of-tune guitar, but not the Nathan Barley Show.

**A/N**: This this is like months in the making. Months. Grueling, grueling months. The story so far: remember the stuff that happened to these two in Flying Lessons? This happens after that stuff happened. Uhh, that's all you need to know I guess.

Waking up that morning was a disconcerting experience for Dan Ashcroft. Jones was not in bed: this was not unusual in and of itself; he often kept unconventional hours, going without sleep for a few days, or staying up for twenty hours, then sleeping for ten, making music at impossible volumes at all waking hours. Music accompanied Jones like a constant, cacophonous aura. That was what was disconcerting about that morning: Jones was awake, and the house was silent. This had only ever signaled that something was very wrong.

Jones could not say how long Dan had been in the room before he spoke. He had come in so quietly, as though apprehensive, afraid to intrude upon Jones' soundless ruminations.

"Jones," he had said quietly, cutting through the vague, mumbling aura of the buzzing of lightbulbs, the hum of the refrigerator, the tick-tick-ticking of a forgotten wristwatch buried at the bottom of a bedroom dresser drawer, all of which seemed to Jones an impossible, unknowable distance away. The sudden proximity and volume of Dan's presence dragged Jones back into the room.

The word - his name - was at once a question, an affirmation; a request, perhaps, or an offering. He could see that Dan was worried. The fact that Dan was worried, worried him. He needed Dan to know that everything was all right, even if he could not know this himself.

Dan sat beside him, rubbing a hand over his sleep-heavy face, trying not to yawn. Jones folded him into a gentle embrace.

"She could still change her mind, Dan," he said. "What if she changes her mind?"

Jones didn't half expect that Dan would make some attempt at reassuring platitudes, some attempt at saying that everything would work out all right and that there was nothing to worry about, even though they both knew this wasn't true. Life was a big festival of uncertainties in the House of Jones.

"I don't know," said Dan, shaking his head, and fumbling about the coffee table in search of his cigarette pack.

Five years previous, Dan Ashcroft had jumped out of a window. Jones went to see him in hospital that night, after everyone had left. Dan lay unconscious and broken, encased in plaster and wired to IVs and other things, still so troubled in his sleep. He was stable and would be out of his casts in a few weeks. Jones knew this. But the sight of him there, so damaged, brought about in Jones such a profound sadness that it scared him. It scared him to think that Dan might not have been so lucky. When Claire had telephoned from the hospital - and it was very nice of her to do so - to let him know that Dan had had an accident, in case Jones wondered where they were - the sound of the universe switched off, the metronome of time ground to a halt, and the rest of the world tiptoed away. In what may have been an instant, or an hour, Jones' mind retreated into a place where his thoughts betrayed him again and again and all he was shown was the worst-case scenario, though he could never quite conceive what that would look like, not really. Life without Dan was inconceivable. He felt submerged, like the shock of falling off the couch and into an ocean, that moment of confusion that seems to last forever, that moment between the fall and the struggle to break to the surface, where everything stops and you forget to breathe. Where was this coming from? Dan was going to be fine. And it wasn't like they were involved, after all; as far as Jones knew, Dan had no interest in dating boys, let alone him. Dan was his flatmate, he reminded himself, nothing more. La dee da. And it wasn't like he fancied Dan. He didn't. He just loved him, that was all. Fuck.

No sense worrying about things we had no control over, he always said, but now he worried. It was too quiet in the hospital. The only sounds in the room now were the hammering speedcore thump of his heartbeat in his ears, and the ponderously arrhythmic _tunk-tunk-tunk_ of Dan's IV drip. Jones took Dan's hand, wrapping his fingers round and pressing their palms together. He leaned down until he could hear Dan's tiny breathing, and brushed his lips against Dan's ear.

"You've got to stop scaring me like this, Dan," he whispered. Quietly as he could, he climbed into the tiny bed, blanketing himself over Dan, to shield him from the world.

Dan had picked up his guitar again, some time after the incident with the window. It was, perhaps, something of a symptom of being t home, and unemployed, and having nothing better to do. To be honest, he was not sure why he had hung on to it for as long as he had; perhaps, he supposed, he kept it merely in the way that we so often are inexplicably loath to get rid of things we no longer have any use for. It had been gathering dust in a corner from flat to flat since university, about the time he realized that his teenaged notion of becoming the guy who plays guitar in REM would never come to pass. It was not a good guitar by any means; at sixteen, he could hardly afford a quality instrument, and in the twenty years since, it had seen its fair share of abuse. Perhaps it was a kindred spirit: a little damaged, a little misunderstood, and as such it had now become a familiar of sorts. Perhaps he was too unmotivated to look for a better one.

One thing of which he was certain, however, was that he, of course, wasn't very good. Nevertheless, that afternoon found him slung almost upside-down on the sofa, clad only in a nearly obliterated old pair of jeans, strumming out an Eric's Trip song, while Jones, flopped on the floor, bare feet swinging in the air, looked on appreciatively. He had just begun to sort out the first chords of an old Guided by Voices number when the phone rang.

"Fuck," he grumbled, tumbling onto the floor. "Where's the fucking phone?"

beep

"Dan Ashcroft," he said.

"For God's sake, it's four in the afternoon," came Claire's exasperated voice from the other end of the phone. "Please tell me I didn't wake you up."

"No, we're up, you just surprised me," Dan rolled his eyes.

"Whatever," said Claire. "Can you two be presentable by, say, six?"

"Yeah," said Dan.

"Do you want to come round for tea, then?" she asked. "I might have some news, if you're serious about your... plans."

Dan found her hesitancy about their... plans, disconcerting. Nevertheless, he was hopeful.

"Seriously? Thanks, Claire," he said.

"See you," said Claire.

beep.

"What's up?" asked Jones, rolling himself into a seated position.

"Claire's asked us round to tea," said Dan. "Presentable, she said. Do I have any clean shirts?"


	2. Chapter 2

**Disclaimer**: I own a nagging case of TMJ, but not the Nathan Barley Show. All the characters in here aren't mine, except the one that is.

**A/N**: Oh yeah, there's one that is. Read on!

At six (or possibly more like six-twenty, following a brief disagreement over whether Dan looked ridiculous in Jones' decidedly snug-fitting Fad Gadget tshirt - the only one clean enough to warrant visiting in) Dan and Jones arrived at Claire's flat for tea and news. She opened the door, and facepalmed.

"Did I not say presentable?" she demanded. "For fuck's sake, what are you wearing?"

Dan glanced down at his wardrobe: blazer only slightly rumpled, the words FAD GADGET stretched comically across his chest, the hint of fuzzy, 39-year-old man belly visible between shirt and waistband, jeans still somehow holding themselves together, and the same trainers he'd been wearing since some time before he left Sugar Ape, and that was a good five years.

"What?" he squinted, stubbing out his cigarette on the sole of his shoe, and stepping into Claire's front vestibule.

Claire's flat looked like an Ikea showroom, painted in buttery off-white and filled with the kind of plain blond wood furniture that looks really good in the catalogue but turns out you like the least of anything once you actually get into the store, but you buy anyway because it's the cheapest, then treat yourself to a cinnamon bun and a coffee, because that's just what you do when you decide to make a day of it at an Ikea.

"What's this about, sis?" asked Dan, with great trepidation. "You all right for money?"

"For God's sake," Claire rolled her eyes. "I _am_ still working on _Blue Peter_. I'm more employed than you are. Not everything's about money, you know."

"How's the film coming, Claire?" asked Jones, smiling.

"Yeah, you know..." she smiled uncomfortably, "it's, umm, it's on the backburner, at the moment, you know, I'm really busy with the show, and umm, but it's good, yeah, I think it's going to be good."

Claire shifted; Dan and Jones smiled apologetically. Claire had moved out of the House of Jones and into her sunny little flat six months after Dan fell out of a window, when she had a) had enough of Jones' sound experiments preventing her from ever getting more than four minutes of sleep at a time; b) had enough of having to tiptoe around Dan and Jones' then burgeoning and (presumably due to Dan's reticence more than anything else) still ostensibly not-quite-public romance; and c) been hired to work as an associate producer on the long-running children's television show _Blue Peter_. She had sworn resolutely at the time that the job was temporary, and would last no more than a year; as such, she said, it would allow her to be able to feed herself and pay rent whilst also saving up funds for her documentary project, which she would continue to work on in her spare time. Somewhere along the way, her projected timeline expanded from one year to two, from two to three, from three to four, and by then she had given up setting herself a date at all. She found herself increasingly often too tired at the end of a day's work to get much filming or editing done of her own, and when she was on holiday or hiatus, she most often felt like not doing much of anything at all.

But she would get it done one of these days, she told herself. Just as soon as she was ready to take that leap.

"Yeah, the project's kind of stalled," she said, staring sadly at the floor.

"What's this about, then?" asked Dan.

"You know how you two have been looking to adopt?" said Claire. "There's someone I'd like you to meet. She's coming round with Nathan."

Nathan, AKA as Nathan fucking Barley, the perennial bane of Dan's existence. A man who, for reasons totally unbeknownst to Dan, his younger sister apparently still tolerated.

"Nathan," sighed Dan. "Really? Still?"

"Can you at least try and be nice to Nathan?" sighed Claire.

"But he's an idiot," squinted Dan.

"You know, it was Nathan's idea that I should introduce you to this woman in the first place," she said. "So would it kill you not to be a complete prick to him?"

"Oh come on, you're not sleeping with him, are you?" Dan facepalmed.

"I don't think that's any of your business," said Claire, rubbing distractedly at her neck as she studied a corner of the ceiling.

If Carys Ffordd Allan looked like anything, it was almost disturbingly fitting how much she resembled a stork: she stood on a pair of skinny legs, which seemed to stretch nearly up to her armpits, and Jones marveled at how such spindly, stick-insect apendages could hold up her already heavy bosom, let alone the burgeoning swell of her belly, which would only grow to even more oppressive proportions as the months went on. Her dark hair was scraped into a ludicrous side ponytail, which only served to accentuate the curiously birdlike nature of her features.

"You must be the gays," she said. "You looking to adopt, or what?"

"Are you...?" Dan began, reaching for adjectives.

"Carys, your baby-mama," she smiled. "Hi."

"Hi," said Dan. "I'm Dan Ashcroft, and this is Jones."

"Alright," smiled Jones.

"So, I guess there's going to be some paperwork to take care of," said Dan. "You know, to sort out how this is all going to work."

"Well basically, I think I can actually sum up how it will work for you," she explained, "there's a baby in my tummy, and I'll carry it for a few months, then somehow squeeze it out of my vagina, and then the rest is up to you."

"That's it?" asked Jones.

"That's it," said Carys.

It turns out it was slightly more complicated than all that, but after a brief hammering out of terms, an agreement was reached which was acceptable to all, and apart from a later meeting to sort out the legal hassles involved, Dan and Jones were, for all intents and purposes, expectant parents.


	3. Chapter 3

**Disclaimer**: You really shouldn't be surprised at all by the fact that I don't own them.

**A/N**: There's a pregnant lady. Do I need to warn for implied past heterosex?

Five years previous, Dan Ashcroft had jumped out of a window. He woke up in a bright white room, bound in plaster and surrounded by people who probably wanted to hurt him. He felt as though he were living an Elliott Smith song in slow motion. Presumably, to cover their collective administrative asses, the hospital sent a nice woman round to have a little chat with Dan, about his feelings or something. She wore a sympathetic smile and a nice blue cardigan.

The nice woman sighed. "Look, why don't you just tell me why you jumped out of the window, then?"

"I panicked," said Dan.

"You panicked?" she repeated.

"I panicked," he repeated.

The nice woman chewed her upper lip in thought, tapping the end of her pen against her clipboard. Jones appeared in the doorway.

"Alright, Dan?" said Jones.

"Jones," nodded Dan.

"Just nipping down for another six coffees. Fancy anything from the canteen? Should I bring up my spare headphones, at all?" he asked.

"Cheers Jones," said Dan.

"That man who just left, is he your...?" she gestured, searching for Dan to finish the sentence.

"What? No, we're not... anything. I'm not - he's my flatmate. I live on his sofa," said Dan.

"He seems to care about you a great deal," she replied. "You should take comfort in that."

"Yeah, I wish I..." Dan stopped himself. "He's a good mate."

"And your sister cares about you too," she continued. "Try to focus on the things you have to be thankful for."

"I'd be thankful for a cigarette," suggested Dan. "Bottle of vodka, maybe? Claire cares because I owe her money."

"I'd say that's a pretty cynical way of looking at things," said the woman.

"It's not cynical," replied Dan. "I'm just being realistic."

After huffing his way through a sympathetic bombardment of stupid questions and assurances that he really, honestly wasn't trying to off himself, really, Dan eventually got out of the ordeal with a bottle of Lexapro and the suggestion that he take some time off before going back to work.

The funny thing is, he thought - and he was sure it was probably the painkillers steadily being channeled into his veins making him think so - he could have sworn there was someone next to him in his bed the night before, and in spite of all the things that had come before, that presence had made him feel like things were somehow all right, like he was home. He never mentioned this to anyone.

"Basically, met Carys, what, two years ago? At the launch of some handbag, or website," said Nathan.

"No, I think it was for that new vodka," Carys interjected.

"Right," said Nathan. "So then we met again when she was in the music video that I directed for Schwanz, and we've been running into each other since. So when I ran into her at 15peter20's new opening, I was like 'All right, Carys?' and she was all like 'All right, Nathan!' and I was like 'So what are you up to these days, you Welsh goddess?' and she was like 'Well fuck, I just found out I'm pregnant,' and I was like 'Nice one mate, that's well fucking fertile!' and she was like 'But no, I didn't mean to be pregnant!' and I thought about it, and then I was like 'Get this, dollsnatch: I know a couple of gays who I hear are well keen on adopting. What do you think?' and she was like 'Sure,' and the rest is, as they say, proper fucking historical."

Nathan beamed. Carys beamed. Claire was at war with her facial muscles, desperately resisting the urge to roll her eyes. This resulted in a somewhat twitchy and almost-but-not-quite believable grin.

"Right," said Dan. "How did you...?"

"Claire asked me to keep an eye out, didn't you monkey muff?" said Nathan.

"Yup," sighed Claire. "And hey, result!"

Five years previous, Dan Ashcroft had jumped out of a window. The following Christmas was the first year he had ever invited anyone round to his parents' home for holiday dinner. Dan's parents had met Jones in passing once or twice, when they were in London for this or that and popped by the kids' place to say hello, or take them to dinner. Dan could not say what - if anything - they thought of Jones. The phone call was mildly terrifying, for some reason.

"All right, luv?" said Mrs. Ashcroft.

"Hello Mum," said Dan. "Listen, can I just - is it all right if Jones comes with us to Christmas dinner?"

"Of course, dear. Jones _is_ your... flatmate, isn't he?" asked Mrs. Ashcroft.

Dan hesitated. "He's not... _just_ my flatmate, Mum," he said.

There was a quiet sigh from Mrs. Ashcroft's end of the telephone.

"Oh," she said, in that way that people do when they mean to sound pleasantly surprised, even though the news they have just heard is about as surprising as the fact that Bela Lugosi is still dead.

And that was how Dan Ashcroft came out to his parents. He had a feeling it was somewhat less of a life-shattering revelation than he had somehow imagined it to be. He had this feeling because the next thing his mother said was

"Does Jones have any food allergies I should know about before I do the shopping?"

"We're gonna be dads, whoo!" exclaimed Dan with a laugh, several beers later. Jones handed him another drink. No sooner had he popped the lid than an avalanche of foam began to rise to the mouth of the bottle. Without thinking, he capped it with his mouth, nearly gagging on foam. When he had recovered his composure, he noticed that Jones was watching him with great concern. Without breaking eye contact, he slowly drew his lips back up the length of the beer bottle, before running his tongue down the neck of it again, encircling it with his lips, tipping his head back, and sucking down the entire contents of the bottle. Jones blushed in response, biting his lower lip. Dan placed the empty bottle on the table, drawing the pad of his thumb over his wet lips, and licking it clean with a soft chuckle.

"I could have done without witnessing that," Claire grimaced.

"Sorry," blushed Jones, tipsily giggling.

"Listen," cautioned Claire, suddenly quieting down. "You two can still change your mind. You know you won't be able to smoke around a baby. And you don't want to risk damaging an infant's hearing."

"Hey, we're not stupid," Dan squinted at her. "What the fuck?"

"I know, I just... God, my big brother's growing up, kind of. It's weird," she smiled, resting a hand on Dan's shoulder. "It's good. I'm proud of you."

"Thanks, Claire," said Dan.


	4. Chapter 4

**A/N**: This is a chapter what needs no introduction, and what's more, after writing eleven chapters of this thing, I've run out of interesting things to say. La dee da, la dee da.

That was it, then. It was official. Dan and Jones were going to be parents to a little boy or girl, presently gestating in the tummy of a nice Welsh supermodel.

Celebrations carried on into the evening, many beers were had by all (save for those among them who were drinking for two) and at some reasonable hour, Claire moaned that she had to be up in the morning and the lads said their thanks and goodnights and headed home.

"So it's happening," said Dan, a little blurry-eyed, his arm slung over Jones' shoulders.

"It's happening," smiled Jones. "We're going to be a well brilliant family."

"Feel like celebrating?" asked Dan, quirking an eyebrow at his partner.

They crashed through the front door, stumbled across and into the kitchen; jackets were thrown off and landed half on kitchen chairs, then slumped to the floor. No matter. Any preparations for their impending new arrival would wait until morning.

The force of their combined weight slamming into the refrigerator sent it, in turn, slamming into the wall. The whole house seemed to shake with the force of them, like the thrumming vibrations of a speaker turned up loud enough. Jones felt it in his skin; Dan humming contentedly into his neck, Dan's hand tangled in his hair, the beginnings of a swell in Dan's jeans grinding into his leg. Jones let out a quiet protest as Dan moved away slightly, to rest his cane against the kitchen counter, but then he was back, hands trailing over Jones' body as he descended.

Dan's arms curled around Jones' waist, and held tightly to him, allowing his fingertips to wander lightly under the hem of his shirt, kissing his waistband, snuggling in.

"Jones, you are fucking gorgeous," he grinned in a low voice, before unzipping him with his teeth.

Jones was wearing his fluorescent green glow-in-the-dark pants that night, Dan observed as he eased them carefully over Jones' hips. They really did make Jones look quite ridiculous with the lights off, but in the laundry pile in the corner of their bedroom at night, they merely added to the visual cacophony that was the House of Jones, and Dan had long learned to filter through the House's visual noise.

Dan smiled at Jones, Jones smiled at Dan, and Dan ran the tip of his tongue over Jones' length before curling his lips around him. Jones gasped at the sudden tidal wave of feeling, the buzz that spread out from his core and made him dizzy with love. He was trying desperately not to let his legs give out from under him while grabbing ineffectually at handfuls of Dan's shirt when Dan, suddenly and without warning, stopped.

"Babe?" asked Jones, puzzled.

"Fuck, sorry," Dan pulled back, wincing.

"You all right, Dan?" asked Jones, with heartbreaking concern.

"No, no, it's just - ah, fuck," said Dan, grimacing as he tried to stand, "my leg's gone to sleep."

"Oh, love," said Jones, tucking himself back in and helping Dan to his feet. "Let's go someplace a little more comfy."

"Wait, wait, stop, I can't move," shouted Dan, standing as still as possible.

"But if you get the circulation going, it'll - "

"Fuck, ow! No, not moving," Dan cringed.

Jones giggled.

"This is less funny than you think it is," replied Dan.

"It is a _bit_ funny, though," said Jones.

"Yeah, it is a bit funny," Dan conceded. "Okay, okay, I think we can do it now, I'm going to try and move."

Dan took one step, leaning into Jones.

"Yeah, nope," he concluded, with a sharp intake of breath and a small whimper.

A moment passed in stillness before leaning into each other folded into an embrace.

"Fuck's sake," said Dan, "still not moving."

"All right," said Jones, placing a small kiss to Dan's neck.

And then another.

And another, and another, and it was around the next another that they both stopped counting.

"Right," said Dan, blushing. "Bed."

And he took a painful step forward.

And then another.

And another, and another, and a few more anothers, until they reached their bed.

It was there that they tumbled down into the soft mattress, rolling and collapsing into one another. It turned out that the room was dark enough that Jones' pants luminesced slightly. He giggled.

"Forgot I had my electric pants on!" he blushed.

"This mean you've got a light sabre for a cock?" asked Dan.

"Nah, same old cock," shrugged Jones. "That'd be well fun though, yeah? We could get them out and have light sabre battles, whoosh, whoosh, whoosh."

Jones continued making whooshy light sabre noises until Dan removed the electric pants altogether. Jones was mildly sad that they, in fact, made no whooshy sound effects themselves. He mused that it would have been proper top to be able to sample the noise electric pants make in a future musical venture.

All thoughts of light sabres and musical ventures fled his consciousness, however, when he found Dan's tongue on him again, and he seemed to luminesce from the inside out.

The little lights in the room had excused themselves and shuffled away quietly, and Jones could not see when Dan pulled back from him, so he closed his eyes and saw the sounds around him instead: the rustle of cluttered bric-a-brac on the bedside table, the click of a bottle of lube being uncapped, the sharp intake of breath as the shock of the cold liquid hit Dan's palm, and the grudgingly accomodating squeak of the old mattress, signaling Dan's return.

"There you are," purred Jones. "I've missed you."

"I've been here all along," murmured Dan, his hands and limbs finding Jones again. Jones smiled inwardly.

"Yeah, I know," he said quietly.

Yeah, he thought, he could see why they found each other. This, this right here, was _heiros gamos_. Most people were apt to forget that Jones was Cambridge-educated. Sometimes, he forgot it himself. And as for why _now_ of all times he would recall a mildly obscure term for the sacred union of opposites from a mythology course he took fuck knows how many years ago - well, they completed each other. Dan completed him.

A kiss and a whisper of anticipation and Dan was in him, once, twice, and Jones arched his hips to meet Dan's fingers, feeding the electric current rising in his belly. He gasped at the sharpness of it, whimpered at the sudden overwhelming intensity of feeling, and barely breathed out words.

"Get on with it, Babe."

"Yeah?" asked Dan.

"Yes, for fuck's sake," he laughed.

He must have shouted every swear he could think of when Dan pushed into him. It felt like that feeling you get when you're dancing in a crowded room and the rhythm's thumping right into you and it's so loud and so bright and you're moving and you're moving until everything else falls away, and you can't feel your own weight or the ground beneath you, and you're not sure if you're standing still or moving at the speed of light, and you're not constrained by your body anymore, you're connected to everything and you can see it all and feel it all and it is all so beautiful.

That was what it was like with Dan. That was what it was like that night; where Jones was vaguely aware of his legs wrapped around Dan's waist and his hips instinctively thrusting up to meet Dan's movements, drawing him in further. But mostly he was aware of Dan driving into him, Dan squeezing his cock and making him dizzy, Dan's ragged, pretty breath against his neck, and the little noises Dan made when he did something that must have felt really, really good. Dan's movements became faster and more erratic then, and Jones could tell Dan was close and the little lights had tiptoed back into the room, or perhaps he was just seeing things. He pulled Dan in as close as he could, beaming.

"Congratulations," he whispered, and came in a fit of giggles.


	5. Chapter 5

**A/N**: Less porn in this chapter, apologies for that. So much fluff it may as well be made entirely from marshmallows. OM NOM NOM NOM.

Neither Jones nor Dan could say precisely how long they had laid there, tangled in a trembling, giggling puddle, as they came down from the glow. Jones was the only person Dan had ever known to come with such unpretentious exuberance. It was, he had to admit, infectious. Dan sat himself up and squinted uncomfortably at the sudden intrusion of light into the room when his match ignited, but adjusted by the time his cigarette was lit.

"Are you worried?" he asked.

"A bit, yeah," admitted Jones, allowing his head and arms to freefloat over the edge of the bed.

"Me too," he said, exhaling slowly, letting the curls of smoke linger in the air. "I mean, you sure you really want to do this, with me?"

"Course I do, Babe," scoffed Jones.

"Look at me, Jones. I can barely take care of myself," he sighed, letting his head fall to one side in sad resignation.

"Don't be stupid," said Jones, sitting himself back up to look at Dan, moonlit and melancholy.

"But I'm - "

"I'm crazy about you, and you're going to be an amazing dad. Don't fucking doubt it for a minute, yeah?" Jones was dead serious. Dan knew better than to argue. He nodded.

"Okay," he said, and he meant it.

By the time Dan returned from his meeting with the publishers to discuss this and that - what kind of nonsense review bits were going on the back cover of the softcover edition, or something, whatever - Jones was busily laying old newspapers down on the floor of the room that was to become the nursery, headphones on tight, absent-mindedly dancing and mumbling bits of sound to himself.

"Dan!" he shouted, throwing his headphones off his ears. A piercing blow of toneless squeaks and exploding beats and little bleepy-bloopy noises filled the air between them.

"What's all... this?" asked Dan, indicating the mess of haphazardly stuck-down masking tape and bits of newspaper strewn about the floor.

"Painting the nursery!" exclaimed Jones, luminous with excitement.

"What's that, purple? Don't they usually do pastels for nurseries?" ventured Dan, squinting at the dark splodges spreading across the walls.

"It's the colour of space, babe! See, but they had this glow-in-the-dark paint that I'm going to use to paint in a rocket ship and the stars and planets, yeah? I've got it kinda sketched out like this," Jones handed Dan a rumpled sheet of paper riddled with sketches and notes most other people would likely have found incomprehensible. "Brilliant, right? Kid's gonna love it!"

"Are you going to leave Pluto in?" asked Dan. "You know they don't call it one of the planets anymore."

"Yeah, I know. Doesn't matter. They're still family," smiled Jones.

The House of Nana Jones was a land of spices, a garden of magic, an oasis of colour in a drear, desert nation. The back garden was resplendent with exotic fruit trees, from which she made sparkling, jewel-like preserves of every colour, and a multitude of herbs, both culinary and medicinal. Whenever they visited, Dan and Jones were met with rib-crushingly enthusiastic hugs and endless cups of bright herbal tea.

When Dan had been introduced to Nana Jones for the first time, he was markedly nervous, but she had welcomed him immediately and without question.

"I can see why you found each other," she had said, somewhat cryptically, smiling.

When they arrived at the House of Nana Jones that afternoon, nearly five years later, they were met with the comforting aromas of fresh baking and lemony peppermint tea.

"The tart's raspberry and almond," she said, serving up generous platefuls of food. "There's a fair bit of limoncello and grappa in there too, but... it's not as boozy as I thought it would be. Cream?"

"Yes please," said Jones. Dan nodded.

"So," she said, setting out three cups of tea and a small jug of cream, and settling down with them at the table, "what's this news that you couldn't tell me over the phone? Wedding bells perhaps, Little One?"

"Baby bells, actually," said Jones, squeezing Dan's hand with love.

"Babybels?" asked Nana Jones, eyeing her beaming grandson quizzically.

"No, baby bells," laughed Jones.

"Oh, _baby bells_," she smiled, brushing a strand of hair behind her ear. "Oh dear, you really shouldn't be having that much grappa if you're pregnant, Dan."

"Uhh, Nan," Dan began, squinting. He glanced at Jones with mild concern.

"For God's sake," laughed Nana Jones, punching Dan lightly on the shoulder. "I may not get as much done as I used to, but I do remember how babies are made."

"Of course," Dan rolled his eyes.

"I'm very proud of you two," she beamed. She stood, and folded them both into a warm embrace. "So. Tell me everything."

Mrs. Ashcroft, on the other hand, was a harder sell on the whole thing. She was one of those mothers who, Dan suspected, had trouble at times seeing her children as fully functioning responsible adults. Never mind the fact that she was a good fifteen or so years younger than Dan himself when she and Mr. Ashcroft brought their beloved firstborn into the world. It was a wonder that she trusted him to cross the road without driving down to hold his hand every time he needed to nip across to Tesco's for a jug of milk.

"Well," she said, tutting quietly into the phone when Dan gave her the news, "that's... certainly a big step."

"Yeah," said Dan. "We know. Obviously."

"I just want to know," she continued. Her speech was hesitant, peppers with many sighs, over-considered. "... that you've both thought about... what kind of a responsibility it is... being parents."

"We _know_, Mum, for God's sake," Dan facepalmed. "We're serious about it. It's not like we're just buying a fridge together."

"Large home appliances are serious business too, Dan," she reminded him.

"_Mum_," he sighed, "just tell me you're happy for us, all right?"

There was a pause, and a heavy sigh, from the other end of the line.

"Of course I am, sweetheart," she said, at long last.

"Thanks Mum," he said.

"You father will be pleased," she said, though Mr. Ashcroft himself would never say so and they both knew it.

"Right. Thanks Mum," he said, and laughed to himself a little.


	6. Chapter 6

**A/N**: Hey, it's another chapter. I don't know why this note's here, as I have nothing witty or interesting to add, and you already know I don't own these characters. So, uhh, read on!

The grating beat thrummed into Jones' ears as he bowed his head forward to meet his hands, palms flat against the floor. Slowing his breathing, he exhaled deeply, letting his calves extend down and his spine relax into the inverted pose. Sliding his feet backwards and tucking in his elbows, he rolled his spine back into a supple curve, raising his head to -

"Jones, what the hell?" Claire glared at him from the doorway.

"Oh! All right, Claire," he shouted over the music, unbending himself into standing position.

"Jones," she repeated through gritted teeth.

"What?" he replied, puzzled.

It was then that Jones noticed that Claire was not alone: behind her were Carys and her burgeoning baby bump, and a smartly-dressed woman of approximately middle age holding a briefcase. It was then also that it occurred to Jones that he was, in fact, stood in the middle of his living room wearing nothing but a pair of Aquaman-printed underpants that were probably originally intended for a large child, if their... _tightness_ over the slight swell of Jones' skinny hips was any indication.

"Oh, right," he laughed. "Back in a minute."

Claire facepalmed as Jones skipped off to the bedroom to dress, turning the music back down to eleven on his way.

"Make yourselves comfortable, I guess," she said to the two women. "Guess I'll just go see if Dan's about."

She found him in the kitchen, attending gingerly to a pot of something simmering on the stove.

"Hey sis," he nodded.

"What are you doing?" she hissed.

"Vegetable dumplings?" he said.

"Thanks for being dressed, at least. I just had the pleasure of introducing Carys and the lawyer to Jones' hairy torso," Claire grumbled with mild, but fading, annoyance.

"Oh yeah, he always -" he stopped himself. "What lawyer?"

"For God's sake, Dan, the lawyer? With the paperwork? For the adoption? I told you we were coming round," sighed Claire. "Would it have killed you to be prepared?"

"Shit, that was today?" he squinted, drawing a hand over his beard.

"Is this going to be the kid's room?" shouted Carys. Dan and Claire left the kitchen to find her staring in wonder at the stars and rocketships in the nursery.

"Jones decorated," said Dan.

"It's lovely," she enthused. "Not as yellow as I'd expected. Yellow's a normal baby colour, isn't it? Looks like a bunch of sick to me, the yellow rooms. This is good. I've got a really good feeling about you two."

"Alright, gang?" said Jones from the living room. "Got my trousers on and all that. Let's get to work!"

Carys stared uncomprehendingly at the endless shelves of plastic bottles before her. There stood rows and rows of things that looked almost but not quite identical, half a dozen different versions of the same thing, and scores of incomprehensible names of things she never knew she needed to live until just then.

"Which ones am I meant to be taking?" she asked.

Claire scanned the shelves, fingering a large white bottle with a blue label. She placed it in Carys' hands.

"I think this should be the only one you need," she said, squinting at the label. "Yeah. Standard prenatal multivitamin. There should be directions on the back."

"Been bloody ages since I took any _good_ drugs," Carys blushed.

"You... don't do a lot of drugs though, do you?" Claire asked, concerned.

"Oh you know, just a bit of coke at parties, the usual," Carys shrugged, as their shopping cart rounded a corner, into the toilet tissue and bottled water aisle. "Except I'm not now. It's proper weird: I can't drink, can't smoke, can't do a bit of coke at parties. I've no idea how to eat!"

"I'm sure it's not that different from a normal diet," Claire assured her. "Just no soft cheeses or sushi or anything, loads of vegetables and protein, but not too much soy, because of the hormones. Do you eat meat at all?"

"No, I don't really eat much of anything. Look at these legs," Carys scoffed, gesturing towards her spindly lower appendages. "Do these look like the legs of someone who eats?"

"For God's sake, Carys, you've got to eat _sometimes_," sighed Claire. "The vitamins are just a start, you know. You've got to supplement them with good food, exercise."

"Well, we're exercising right now, right?" Carys grinned, as though, on some level, she were just as much trying to convince herself.

"We're... walking, at a moderately slow pace, through a supermarket," said Claire. "I don't think this qualifies."

"Oh. Well, fuck," said Carys.

"How about something gentle, like yoga?" suggested Claire, as they turned into the produce aisles.

"Yeah, maybe," Carys grimaced. "but how do I eat?"

Claire let out a heavy sigh. This was going to be an uphill battle. But Carys was a nice girl, full of good intentions, and despite her apparent shortcomings, was carrying Claire's future neice or nephew.

"This is a bag of salad," said Claire, pointing to a cellophane package of mixed lettuces. "You don't need to do anything to it, just dump it into a bowl, bit of dressing, and eat it. And then eat other things, and you have to repeat this every day. Easy enough?"

Carys nodded.

"Good. Next, think you can handle opening a single-serve yogurt pot? Maybe when we get home, I'll take you through how to do cheese on toast."

Fire years previous, Dan Ashcroft had jumped out of a window. Somehow, through some combination of relentless caring and incessant encouragement, Jones convinced him that it would be a good idea to write that book he had been always meant to getting around to writing.

And he did.

And then some people published it. The result of all this, more or less, was that Dan had suddenly found himself with a publisher and an agent and that this, while not on the scale of full-on Idiocy that surrounded him during his tenure at Sugar Ape, was, at the best of times, shitty.

Dan Ashcroft did not like having a literary agent. Or perhaps, he wondered, he just did not like having _his_ literary agent for a literary agent. He especially did not like when his agent telephoned him, which almost invariably meant he had bad news.

"Dan Ashcroft," he grumbled.

"Dan! How's my favourite writer in the universe?" asked the cheerful voice on the other end of the line.

"Hello, Crizz, you irredeemable cunt," he cringed. The man's name was _Crizz_, ferchrissakes. "What the fuck do you want?"

"I hope you haven't forgotten about today's book signing!" enthused Crizz.

Yup, thought Dan, bad news.

Book signings were one of the apparent necessary evils of being a published author that Dan would rather find blood in his stool than ever have to do. Not that he had had the pleasure of doing any previous book signings, but it was something he knew he would be much happier to avoid altogether.

Inevitably, therefore, he found himself sat at a small table in Waterstone's that afternoon, a stack of books to one side of him and an extra-large coffee on the other. More or less, these events would mean that he got to sit at a table for a few hours until they let him go home, occasionally having to talk to a reader, who - if he was lucky - would not want to talk at great length about their painful misreadings of his narrative or ask questions about it that he himself had no answers for.

On this day, however, Dan was not so lucky: after three quarters of an hour of trying to live down the shame of one woman who announced that she thought, based on the impression given by his "About the Author" photo, that he would be better-looking, along came two of his former colleagues.

So rarely were Ned Smanks and Rufus Onslatt seen outside of one another's company that Dan went so far as to theorize that the pair shared a single brain cell between them.

"Aaaaaashcroooooooooft!" exclaimed Rufus, who was inexplicably wearing a bow tie over his orange track jacket.

"Oh, hey," nodded Dan.

"High fives and shit about the book, Preach?" said Ned, whose thick-rimmed spectacles nearly eclipsed his entire face.

"Yeah, it was well transgressive," said Rufus.

"So you read it, did you?" squinted Dan. "Do you even know what transgressive means?"

"Yeah, we did a review for Sugar Ape," explained Ned. "Like, we liked how it was, like, about the past and shit? And how it keeps, like, manifesting itself in the present? And then how the one bloke's looking for something that, like, don't exist no more, and the other one's, like, disavowing something that'll always be a part of his identity and stuff."

Dan blinked. For Ned Smanks, that outburst was surprisingly insightful and sounded very nearly literate. Dan was not sure what mirror universe he had woken up in that day, but something about this was properly unsettling to him.

"That's... thanks, Ned," he said, bewildered, accepting the compliment with shell-shocked and possibly slightly woozy gratitude.

"And then that bird from Bristol turns into, like, a bloke and shit?" added Rufus. "Well bum. So what's his junk look like, anyway? How would they, like...? Does he still have a lady's - "

"That doesn't matter, okay?" sighed Dan. And with that, the normal order of the world reasserted itself, and Dan was quietly comforted in his irritation.


	7. Chapter 7

**A/N**: This chapter is late, as I've been spectacularly unwell last night and this morning. Turns out my bathroom rug is really comfortable for napping. Onward!

Carys stepped out of the shower and frowned. She stared down at where she supposed her feet still were, though they had long since been obscured by the vast expanse of her belly. This was weird. Regardless of how normal this whole process was supposed to be, it was all she could do to keep from having nightmare visions most closely resembling that one scene in _Alien_, and - worse - of never losing the baby weight. This whole thing was just gross. It was anathema to her entire way of life.

Claire arrived just as she was finished dressing. Claire was taking her to the doctor that day.

"Hiya," she smiled.

"Oh, hey Claire," said Carys.

"How's everything?" asked Claire. "You all right?"

"Yeah, I'm great. I have to pee every five seconds, and then when I go pee, I don't even pee," Carys moaned. "You don't want to know what else is happening to me, Claire. I'm turning into an itchy monster. Where's the pregnant fucking glow?" 

"You've probably just got an infection, that's normal," said Claire.

"But they won't let you take any of the drugs when you're pregnant!" cried Carys, slumping forward into a blubbering heap. "And I look like a flaming Zeppelin! 'Oh look, it's a passing airship,' people would say as I walked by. 'Why that's not an airship, it's just Carys Ffordd Allan!'"

"Fuck's sake, you look fine," sighed Claire. "Let's just get you to the doctor, all right? Then we'll meet Nathan for lunch. And you _will_ eat lunch, Carys."

"...yeah," Carys nodded, sniffling.

"She could still change her mind, Dan," said Jones. "What if she changes her mind?"

"I don't know," said Dan, shaking his head, and fumbling about the coffee table in search of his cigarette pack. "Do you really think that's likely?"

"Not likely, no," conceded Jones, "but what if she does?"

Dan had never really considered the possibility. What if she did? Another failure to add to Dan Ashcroft's List of Failures, which had to be at least the length of his book by now, he thought. Jones would get over it, find another way, start again, make it happen: Jones was relentless.

Carys sighed into her tea. Her morning had been spent largely in an unfashionable paper gown, while being prodded by trained professionals who spent a lot of time shining cold lights into her birth canal before ultimately concluding that yes, she was still pregnant, and yes, everything was healthy.

"Would somebody just get this thing out of me? I look like a fucking whale shark," she moaned.

"You've gained like five pounds," said Claire, with an exasperated sigh. "If I sneezed in your direction, I'd send you flying across the room."

"Thanks Claire," sighed Carys.

"Umm, maybe this is a bad question, but... do you have any plans for, you know, after?" asked Claire.

"Few weeks in Paris with some mates there, get my figure back, then New York," she said, fishing her phone out of her purse. "Got some folks there dying to get me back to work already!"

"That's... that's really good," said Claire.

"See, here's a picture of me with Lady Gaga at a party," she shrugged, shoving her mobile phone screen in Claire's face. "She was proper jealous of my shoes, right? They were especially made for me by Emmanuel Kunt? Can't fit into them now, mind you."

"Emmanuel Kunt?" repeated Claire, incredulously.

"Lovely fellow," she enthused. "Anyway, he's launching a new thing in New York and insists that I be a part of it, so there you go."

"I'm glad to hear it," smiled Claire.

"Yeah," said Carys. She paused then, and breathed, quietly. "It'll be weird, going back, as if I'd only been on holiday or something. I'm really happy to be doing this, you know? But it's proper weird. It's like, I don't know. But it's good, yeah?"

"Yeah, it's good," said Claire, sipping her tea.

Admittedly, Jones did not have much experience with children. He grew up more or less entirely in the company of his grandmother, no aunts or uncles or cousins about - and he could not say for certain whether or not he had brothers or sisters - or nieces or nephews, for that matter - out there, wherever his mother ended up, and presumably there were no siblings on Dad's side either, or he would likely have not been nearly so generous in his will. So Jones grew up used to the company of adults, and apart from the other kids at school, that was about it. This desire - this _need_ - to be a parent, was not something he could easily explain. Something about Dan, perhaps, a feeling. This was something that would be good. This was something they were ready for - as ready as anyone ever is, he reminded himself. None of this made it any less terrifying, and none of that terror made the possibility of it somehow not happening any less heartbreaking.

Jones worried more than he let on. It was still not that often that he worried; no sense worrying about things we had no control over, he always said, but at times this was a harder rule to adhere to than others. He knew Dan worried about not being a good parent; he worried about not getting the chance to be parents at all. He snuggled into Dan's side as Dan sat and smoked, and let the ocean of Dan's breaths float him back to a hopeful place.

"Cuppa coffee?" he asked.

"Thanks," said Dan.

"Genius," he smiled weakly, toddling off to the kitchen.

Five years previous, Dan Ashcroft jumped out of a window. His bones healed, his casts were removed, and he was left with a cane and a little limp and a flatmate who - for reasons he never quite fully understood - loved him very much.

Jones bounced up and down to the sound of waves lapping at the shore, barefoot and for once unencumbered by wires. When he had first come to Goa - fresh out of school and looking to find himself - he spent two weeks straight on, he was quite sure, no sleep, carried forward and forward on pure momentum, finding luminous clarity within the trance there. When he brought Dan along that one winter, however, he knew the trance would not afford Dan the peace he was taking tiny steps towards. Instead, Jones found himself doing twists and backbends in the sun, his bright sarong fluttering gently in the breeze, while Dan dozed softly on the sand like a cat in that one spot on the carpet where the sun filters in through the window.


	8. Chapter 8

**A/N**: Hey, Special Guest Stars! I hope this doesn't mean I've jumped the shark.

The shower was interesting, to say the least. Claire had pored through every page of Dan's address book for contacts, skipping those marked with big black frowny faces - she had assumed Jones placed those there as a shorthand for "these are the people Dan has to talk to sometimes, but they make him very sad." So Dan was there, and Jones, and Claire, and Carys of course, Nathan (in spite of the very large frowny face that had accompanied his name), Jones' nan, an old coworker of Dan's, and some sometime bandmates of Jones from that Banana Thing he did. Claire reckoned they sounded like a recording of a herd of dying elephants run through a food processor and served as a puree poured into the ear canal via special brass cones which reverberated at every frequency at once.

So it was a bit of a weird day.

The first gift was from the other two-thirds of Dancing Banana Trees, Vince Noir and Howard Moon. The wrapping paper was meticulously creased, folded, and sellotaped around the gift, then festooned with a seemingly infinite number of curled, colourful ribbons.

"You'll notice, sir," mentioned Howard, "that if you carefully lift the sellotape from one corner and slide out the tissue inside, you can re-use the - "

but whatever remained to be seen of that statement was moot, as Jones immediately tore open the sparkling tissue paper with reckless abandon, and could not stifle his giggles. He held aloft the tiny items that had been concealed inside, beaming.

"Mirrorball booties!" proclaimed Vince, puffing up with pride. "Made them myself!"

"Uhh, Vince," Dan began.

"Lined with hypoallergenic fleece," explained Howard. "Functional and comfortable."

"Wow, uhh, thanks guys," blinked Dan. "I think I'm going to put on some tea."

This sort of organized get-together - indeed, more or less _most_ organized get togethers - were not exactly Dan's scene. It was primarily for this reason that he volunteered himself to retreat to the kitchen and get the food together. Why Vince Noir - the epitome of cool, charming in every social situation, and universally beloved - chose to act as his assistant, was mildly less clear.

Except that Vince and Dan had, in the months since their first meeting, against all odds, become rather good friends.

Vince made Dan sign the inside cover of his book every time he visited Vince's flat. The first inscription was sincere enough. It read:

_Vince,_

_Thanks for everything._

_-Dan_

"You can do better than that," Vince had said, quirking an eyebrow at him. As such, the next inscription read as follows:

_Vince,_

_The publishers tell me that this book is printed using vegetable-based inks. I am also told that it contains no nutritional value. Do not attempt to eat this book._

_Love,_

_Dan_

But Vince's very favourite inscription was this:

_Vince,_

_I can see your nipples through your jumpsuit. Please correct this._

_Love,_

_Dan_

"This is for you," said Nana Jones with an impish grin, pressing a small paper bag into Carys' hands.

"Is... is this drugs?" she asked, eyeing the older woman suspiciously.

"_Herbs_, love," smiled Nana Jones. "You make a tea with a spoonful of this every morning, to help with the usual troubles. Settles the stomach, eases - " and she leaned in extra close before continuing, and whispered "frequent urination."

"Oh, that's absolutely lovely," laughed Carys. "I swear, it's every five minutes sometimes. So I get up, run to the toilet, and then nothing. Such a bloody nuisance!"

"I know, poppet," said Nana Jones, patting Carys' hands with a small chuckle. "I was pregnant once too, back when dinosaurs walked the earth."

When Dan emerged from the refrigerator, he noticed that Vince appeared to be regarding him with intense concentration.

"You're... looking at me," he squinted. "Why?"

"I'm trying to decide whether I like your shirt," he said. "It's a _bit_ plaid, isn't it?"

"So?" replied Dan, taking a large plate down from a cupboard.

"Exactly," nodded Vince. "I think it sort of works. You've got the whole, sort of, sad lumberjack thing going. You'd look well cool if you were wearing a big furry hat!"

"No," Dan shook his head with great solemnity. "Never."

"Got names picked out yet?" asked Vince, poking through Claire's kitchen cupboards.

"A few," replied Dan, painstakingly prying open the corners of the Tesco's Finest Vegetarian Sandwich Assortment that Claire had got in for nibbles.

"You know, Vince is a lovely name for a boy or a girl," observed Vince, scrambling on his tiptoes to pluck a jar of Nutella from the very back of the cupboard.

"Are you fucking serious?" asked Dan, carefully slicing each triangle into two smaller triangles.

"Course I am," said Vince, giving up his search for a teaspoon, getting his finger in instead.

Dan looked up from his task to see Vince lazily sucking the last of the Nutella from his fingertip, eyes rolled back in pure nutsy-chocolate ecstasy. Dan's eyebrows shot up in such surprise that they nearly left his forehead altogether and blasted through Claire's kitchen ceiling.

"What?" puzzled Vince.

Dan cleared his throat, turning his attentions once more to the sandwiches.

"Do you reckon it's going to be weird?" asked Vince, swirling a nearly empty milk jug. "I mean, you nervous?"

"Not really," shrugged Dan, instinctively reaching for a cigarette, then silently cursing Claire's non-smoking flat. "No. I mean yeah. Yep. Obviously."

"I mean, I had to look after the baby animals in the zoo, so if you ever need any advice, just give me and Howard a shout, yeah?" smiled Vince.

"Uhh, I don't think it's exactly the same sort of - "

"Hey Dan, have I ever told you about when I was little and I lived in the forest with Bryan Ferry?" asked Vince.

"Uhh, what," said Dan. "I thought you grew up in London, didn't you?"

"Well, yeah," said Vince, taking an assortment of mugs down from the cupboard, "but before that, I lived in a treehouse with Bryan."

Dan nodded. It was best, he had learned, not to question Vince's stories. Most of the time, they were, it turned out, too fantastical to be anything but true.

"Anyway," Vince continued, filling the kettle, "as you can imagine, Bryan was away a lot of the time, touring and recording with Roxy Music. So most of the time it was just me and the animals, like Nadirah the wise old kiwi, and her scandalously younger boyfriend, Niels."

"What was Niels, then, an ocelot?" asked Dan, immediately regretting the question.

"Nah, he was a 1980 Fiat Panda," said Vince.

"Oh," replied Dan. "Of course."

"My point is," said Vince, plopping a teabag in each mug, "I grew up with an absentee foster parent and a bunch of wild animals, and I turned out fucking awesome! Think about it: this kid's going to have the benefit of two dads, a birth mum, an Aunt Claire, a gran, granddad, great-nan, and two fairy godfathers, who all love him or her very much. So this kid's upbringing's clearly going to be well genius!"

"I'll, umm… I'll accept that logic," said Dan.

"Beautiful," smiled Vince. "Come on, then, huggy bears."

Dan sighed, and allowed himself to be folded into Vince's embrace. Vince was warm and smelled like cake - as much as any human could smell like cake, Vince really did smell just like cake. It was uncanny and strange and impossible not to sort of love, just like Vince.

Their embrace was interrupted by the shrill whistle of Claire's tea kettle.

"Oi Sasha, reckon you could knit one of these in my size?" came Jones' exuberant voice from the living room.

"We should get back in there," whispered Dan.

Vince blushed, reaching up to apply a soft kiss to Dan's cheek.

"Yeah," he agreed.

Jones could just overhear a quiet exchange of words from the kitchen, as Howard handed him a plain, cardboard box - another gift, ostensibly.

Inside the box was one of those little xylophones one gives to small children, whose notes were painted in a rainbow of colours.

"It stands to reason that music may well run in your family, sir," said Howard, as Vince and Dan returned from the kitchen with a plateful of hummus, avocado, and carrot sandwiches on organic sprouted grain sunflower and oat bread, and endless mugfuls of hot tea.

Jones nodded appreciatively, and gave the instrument a good exploratory bang-about. The colours of the wooden blocks did not match the tones they produced when he struck them with the accompanying hammer; indeed, some clashed quite strangely. But Jones had learned many years ago that most people did not see the colourful light show he did when he heard music. Perhaps he would repaint them to match the way he saw their sounds.

"That is well cool," he smiled. "Cheers, guys."


	9. Chapter 9

**A/N**: Parts of this chapter were a late addition, and are really a testament to the way in which sometimes characters can surprise you with the directions they choose to take the story.

"Looks like some kind of lizard!" Jones gazed at the whooshing screen with awe.

Somewhere in the visual noise, he could see a squidgy little blob all snuggled down. He wondered if he could sample that whooshing. He could hear the beginnings of a song in it. Dan had just stepped out of the room to take a call; Carys looked mildly uneasy as the technician squished a magic wand around her distended belly.

"Alright, Peanut," said Jones to the little blob on the screen. "I'm going to be one of your dads! Dan, he's just outside, he's going to be your dad too. We can't wait to meet you, it's going to be well ma-"

"I don't think it can hear you through the telly, Jones," interjected Carys, confused. "I don't know how it works, but I don't think _that's_ how it works."

"You know," said the technician, clearing the cold blobby stuff off of Carys' belly, "a lot of people find it really helpful to talk directly to the baby through the mother's belly. Why don't you try that?"

"Nice one," smiled Jones. "No, even better!"

Jones carefully extricated his headphones from around his neck and placed them against Carys' belly. He fished around in the mess of wires draped over his torso until he found the ipod he was looking for, and wheeled round until he found just the right piece with which to say hello to the baby. As soon as he hit play, Carys' eyes grew wide with shock and wonder.

"Jesus fuck, Jones, I think the baby's pulling shapes," she laughed. "It's your kid, all right."

"That is well massive," he smiled, pumping his fist in the air along with the quiet beats radiating through the room.

"What's - " Dan squinted as he returned from the corridor.

"Check it out, babe! The kid's pulling little babyshapes in the womb!" exclaimed Jones, pointing excitedly at the headphones strapped across Carys' middle. Dan carefully navigated his way around the various furniture and machines in the room, and back to Jones' side.

"You're still going to have to keep it down when the kid moves in with us though, you know that," said Dan.

"Yeah, I know," laughed Jones, snaking an arm around Dan's waist. "How are you going to sleep with all that quiet?"

By Dan's estimation, Jones had had nine litres of coffee on the flight to Berlin, and would not sleep that weekend. Dan, on the other hand, slept comfortably through Jones' thundering DJ set at Popmusikhaus (or whatever equally German club it was they went to), slept through the walk back to the shoebox flat they were borrowing from the strange German girls in Tugboats in Stereo or whatever they called themselves, and only woke to the sound of Jones' voice, on the telephone back to London, again.

"You know you can just ring if you need anything at all... yeah, I know she's not due yet, but... look, in case of emergency, there's a mix I've done for when she goes into labour, and it's on my laptop at the house, all right? Yeah, but just tell her not to start having the baby until - "

and he likely would have continued in that way, but for the fact that Dan extricated the phone from Jones' grasp, switched it off without so much as a goodbye Claire, and shoved it down the front of his trousers.

"Babe, what the - " Jones began.

"They _will_ ring if anything happens," Dan reminded him, lighting a fresh cigarette, gazing out the window on the dark and silent street below. "If you want the phone back, you're just going to have to brush your hand against my penis to get it."

"Babe, is this your way of telling me to stop fretting and come have a shag?" facepalmed Jones.

"Probably. We going to be ringing home all through the wedding next week too? Because I think it might distract the happy couple if you're brushing your hand against my penis there," observed Dan, taking a long draw on his cigarette, allowing the smoke to curl round him in pornographically dreamy curls. "Is it working?"

"Course it's working, babe," beamed Jones, ruffling his multicoloured hair in that way he did when Dan made him feel all sexy.

Jones eyed Dan suspiciously before diving for his trousers. He slid his hand in and had a good - possibly _too_ thorough - feel around for his phone. Dan could tell by the way Jones was half squinting and his tongue slightly escaped one corner of his mouth that he was concentrating very, very hard on his task. Dan gasped as Jones' hand bypassed the phone altogether and curled softly around him. The sudden intake of breath caused him to choke on a plume of too much cigarette smoke; he chucked what remained of it out the window as he sputtered and coughed. Jones tossed his phone onto the desk, and led Dan gently to the bed, sitting him down.

"Jesus, babe," he said, concerned. "Let me get you some water."

"It's fine, fine," Dan coughed, attempting to dispel Jones' concern. "I just... fuck."

"Aww, babe," Jones rubbed Dan's back softly until his breathing returned to normal.

Dan growled softly in appreciation of the contact, before pouncing on Jones. The smaller man giggled and wriggled under him, sneaking his hands beneath Dan's moth-eaten striped jumper.

"I love you, babe," he grinned.

Unwrapping Jones was sometimes a complicated undertaking: after the night's show, he had remained covered in wires and cords and things that made noise, ipods and kazoos and at least three sets of headphones slung about his person. Dan sat up, straddling his legs, and carefully unwound each one. Jones felt strangely naked without his equipment, strangely vulnerable, but he felt safe with Dan.

"I want..." Dan said, trailing off.

"What do you want?" asked Jones, tracing a fingertip across Dan's fuzzy jawline.

"You," grinned Dan, running his tongue over his teeth.

Jones now understood Dan's intention. Loud, loud fucking. This was a luxury they had to take advantage of while they could. Without warning, he rolled Dan onto his back, flinging his shirt onto the floor.

Berlin was a deceptively quiet city. There were so many musicians Jones knew - casual acquaintances, mostly, some less rubbish than others - who chose to live there. It might well have been a good place to work, but Jones' home was London, and Dan's home was with Jones.

Once in a while, a car would pass beneath their window, swishing through the wet street below. Apart from that, it seemed, the whole city had long since gone to sleep. Everyone, except for Dan and Jones, lost in their little universe.

For five years, it had just been them, Dan Ashcroft and Jones: their own little universe of two, with their own rhythms and their own little language, at times almost without words. They clung to one another now with screaming desperation, fucking in the dark of a tiny German room, knowing that for better or worse, everything was about to change. They were about to let someone else in, and they wanted to, they were both certain of it, but it would never be their little universe of two again: this mode of life, Jones's loud noises and Dan's overflowing ashtray on the kitchen table, was about to undergo an evolution so drastic that neither could quite envision it in its entirety, and no matter how wonderful their new life might be, they hung on to this moment for dear life. They hung on to this moment because they knew it might never come again.

Neither would say this out loud, but they understood. They understood when Dan chanted Jones' name over and over, screaming with joy into the pillow; they understood when Jones held Dan's hand in his own, squeezing tightly, leaning down to place a kiss just between Dan's shoulder blades. They understood the strange, underlying sense of loss that neither could articulate, that they were each afraid they would miss their life as it was. There was no way to resolve this, of course, but to hold on, and move forward.

So Jones held on to Dan, burying his face in Dan's neck, nibbling him there, and Dan let out a rumbling growl. All the little sounds he made were beautiful to Jones. It was so perfect, this communication without words: a tactile dialogue. Dan's breaths became ragged and Jones could tell he was close. Dan shouted Jones' name as he came, and Jones came tumbling after, spilling into him, effervescent warmth spreading out from his core and throughout his trembling body. As they collapsed, breathless, into each other, Dan looked at Jones, and Jones looked at Dan.

"Cheers babe," said Jones, burying his face in Dan's shoulder.

It was not until Dan began to stroke his hair and whisper to him that Jones realized he had begun quietly sobbing.


	10. Chapter 10

**A/N**: Crap, it's almost done. This means I'm totally not writing the other stories I'm working on fast enough. Guys, make me write! Also, so yeah, this is second-last chapter. Yep.

Jones was not sleeping. This was normal. They had returned an hour ago from a wedding reception, and Dan had immediately collapsed, face first, on top of their duvet. Jones would join him, he thought, in another hour and a half or so. He stood at his turntables amid flashing lights and piles of wires and buttons, composing his cacophonous masterpieces. It was no small miracle that he actually heard the phone ring.

Moments later, Dan was roused from his peaceful, noise-induced hibernation by Jones who leapt onto the bed and clung to him in a panicked snuggle.

"Jones?" groaned Dan. "What time is it?"

"Gotta get up, Babe," flailed Jones. "Hospital! Major contractions! Hospital! Baby coming out... of... lady! We have to go!"

Dan sat bolt upright.

"Oh," he said, rubbing a sleepy hand over his sleepy face. "I just... put pants on, then... we... you drive."

Dan rolled out of bed, and onto the floor, where he lay motionless for about ten seconds - which felt like either a split second, or a good few hours - before getting up and feeling about for a cleanish pair of jeans.

The gravity, the realness of what they were doing, became increasingly realer with every day that passed. Dan had no confidence in his parenting skills; hell, he thought, he was unsure as to whether he even _liked_ children. But asking oneself if one liked children was, he thought, about as ludicrous as asking oneself if one liked adults. He could conceivably like some of them, he supposed, and he supposed he would like his own, because his own would be, well, his. It was much too late to change his mind, regardless. Not that he would have: five years previous, he never would have imagined Jones getting excited about tiny baby-sized overalls, but ever since Jones gathered up his turntables and took up residence in Dan's heart, life was a festival of the unexpected.

Jones worried that Dan worried that he would fail at being a father. Jones knew better. To Jones, Dan was wonderful. He loved the way Dan would laugh proudly at his own (often terrible) jokes, the way he would snuggle in his sleep like a hibernating bear, the way he looked in that striped cardigan he bought for times when he had to look sort of nice. It suited him. As did the idea of Dan attempting to feed Cheerios to a very small person in tiny overalls. It was not something he could explain. It was the just the kind of tacit knowledge that needed no words.

The dark was nice. Unconsciousness was nice: it crept in through a crack in the bedroom window like a benevolent fog, and blanketed them both. Nathan dreamed of nice things like coffee and blowjobs and MP3 release parties. Somewhere, as he was floating through a house made of neon pillows, there was a phone ringing. No, no, that was an actual phone, in the real, waking world, he thought. Nathan squinted through the dark, fumbling blindly for the source of the offending noise. He found it, and grudgingly answered.

"Claire Ashcroft's phone," he said.

"Nathan?"

"Carys, you fertile goddess!" exclaimed Nathan. "What's happening?"

"Would you just let Claire know my contractions started about half an hour ago? Owfuck," she cried, so loudly that for a moment, Nathan thought she had punctured his eardrum.

"Sure thing, Welshy knickers," said Nathan, holding the reciever as far from his ear as he could, wincing. "Oi Claire babes, Carys is about to pop out the nipper!"

"What?" moaned Claire, now grudgingly conscious.

"She's contracting and shit?" he offered.

"Ugh, fuck's sake, all right," mumbled Claire. "Tell her I'm on my way."

"We're on our way," Nathan shouted reassuringly into the phone. "Just, sort of, hold the kid in there until we come round, yeah?"

"Thanks Nathan," said Carys. "Tell Claire that Dan and Jones are meeting us at the hospital, yeah?"

"Yeah, futures Mama muff!" Nathan hung up the phone, springing into action, throwing a clean jumper at Claire, who had fallen back asleep.

Nathan Barley was a cock. This was something about which Dan was unwavering in his certainty. Why Claire insisted on spending any of her free time with him, Dan could not say. It was not out of over-protective older brother instinct, either; rather, Dan knew that Claire was an intelligent, interesting woman, with typically little patience for Idiocy, and Nathan Barley was, well, a cock. He tried to find some redeeming value in the man, some ounce of common ground, a smidge of understanding, something that made him a potentially tolerable human being. He tried and tried and tried. But nope, he concluded: cock.

"Check it out, well fucking carnage!" shouted Nathan, pointing his camera phone in Dan's face. "Aww, it's disgusting! You must be chuffed to bits, proud papa!"

"This is _not_ going on Trashbat, Nathan," glared Dan. "Who let you in here?"

"Oh come on Preach, I - "

"Nope," said Dan, pointing toward the door. "Out. Now."

Nathan's smile waned slightly as he left.

"So what's going on in there?" asked Claire, as Nathan sat beside her on the uncomfortable waiting area sofa.

"Loads of screaming and pushing," said Nathan. "Well fucking gruesome! Didn't get to _see_ anything coming out her clunge, but - "

"That's... enough, Nathan" said Claire. "Everything all right, though?"

"Think so, lovelycakes," he nodded.

A minute - or a few minutes, who knows - passed in uncomfortable silence. Both felt the need to fill the air with something, words, something, but neither did. They shifted, staring at the clock, staring at the door, avoiding eye contact, until finally

"Fancy a coffee?" asked Claire, standing, fishing through her jacket pockets for coins.

"Only if they've got organic fair-trade," said Nathan. "Don't drink that exploitive Republican shit anymore, yeah? That's, like, what terrorists and oil companies and the government want you to drink, and shit?"

"Nathan, it's instant," Claire rolled her eyes with obvious exasperation. "It comes from that machine."

"Yeah, go on, then," he shrugged.

"Fuck, I'm not even awake yet," moaned Claire, as the machine went wrrrrrrrrrzhhhhhhhhhhhh and somehow magically produced two cups of what purported to be "cappuccino". She collapsed beside Nathan and handed over his drink.

"Cheers, fuzzy knickers," he grinned, raising his cup in a feeble attempt at a toast. Claire let out a loud yawn in response.

"Oi Clare babes?" he said.

"What?" she replied.

"Now that your big bruv's gone all parental, you ever think about, maybe, you know, you and - "

"Shit off," she scoffed. "If I'm not ready to go there, there's no fucking way you are."

"Oh," he said quietly.

They sipped their coffees, and waited.


	11. Chapter 11

**A/N**: Ok, so I've been actively living with this fic for months, and this is the last chapter of it, but I honestly didn't think I'd feel this emotional when I got to the end of it. I'm feeling a little bit weepy, guys. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I enjoyed writing it!

Five years previous, Dan Ashcroft had jumped out of a window. Five years had gone by, he was older: he was undoubtedly now residing in the territory of the middle-aged. This was something easy enough to forget for him, for he was not sure he felt older. He was not sure what older was meant to feel like, but surely, on some level, he seemed to hold onto the notion that in order to qualify as being middle-aged at all, you had to be the sort of person who drove a Saab and read the newspaper while eating breakfast. You had to be the sort of person who _ate_ breakfast. Dan, on the other hand, had at least moved on from having a breakfast of whatever dregs of the previous night's drinks remained watered down by melted ice in their glasses on the kitchen counter. That and the fact that he was a bit softer in places, admittedly, less of the broad beanpole he was at university, and more sad brown bear.

But Jones said it suited him.

Jones seemed not to change at all: he was, as always, a blur of fuzzy flailing limbs, a ruffled mop of feathery plumage in ever-changing colours, a cacophony of sounds at once undeniably jarring and absolutely beautiful, possessed simultaneously with ruthless elitism and childlike wonder. He was like a dozen animals whizzed together in a blender and poured into a Jones-shaped smoothie. Maybe it was just that they grew together so long and so slowly that the ways they changed seemed almost imperceptible, but were nonetheless present. You know, like being ready to want to have a kid. That was kind of a big one.

Carys practiced unhelpful rhythmic breaths and screamed obscenities well into the night, nearly breaking Jones' hand, then Dan's, then the hand of an attending nurse. She was dismayed to discover that, in spite of having known a good dozen women who had given birth themselves, no one thought to tell her of the probability that she would at some point have to go to the toilet, and it would be gross.

This was one of apparently many things that polite mothers did not mention. Such bullshit illusions we perpetuated about the glowing, magical experience of childbirth, she thought - where with just a little bit of a strenuous push and a dab of sweat mopped from the happy mother's brow, a beautiful baby emerges sparkling and clean from her lady garden, no muss, no fuss, no screaming for drugs or shitting the bed - when she could think things beyond get me another fucking cup of ice chips and just get this kid out of me already.

And in spite of all that, when it was done, it _was_ all beautiful.

Sometime in the late morning, a little girl named Felicity Ashcroft-Jones was welcomed into the world. She was tiny and squidgy and pink and mostly slept, and Dan and Jones loved her very much.

"Alright, Peanut," Jones smiled, as Dan held her. "We're going to be your dads, if that's cool."

Felicity yawned, scrunching her tiny hand into a tiny fist beside her very serious face.

"I hope that means it's cool," puzzled Jones, gently stroking Felicity's dark, downy hair.

"Uhh, yeah love, I think it's cool," nodded Dan.

Neither Claire nor Nathan could say how many hours had gone by. They had long since allowed themselves to slip back into the dark sea of unconsciousness, waves of sleep flowing gently over them, blanketed under a twinkling sky of dreams.

"Yeahhhhhhhh!" the shout of Jones was a tidal wave of excitement, and Claire and Nathan's sleepy naptime boat crashed against the rough, jarring cliffs of sudden wakefulness.

"What?" mumbled Claire, rubbing her eyes.

"She's a baby!" shouted Jones, crashing into Nathan and Claire with hugs.

"You mean it's a girl?" squinted Claire.

"Yeah, she's beautiful!" beamed Jones.

"That's well fucking... well," mumbled Nathan, barely conscious.

"Just... just let him know she's called Felicity when he wakes up, yeah?" Jones shrugged. Claire nodded.

Jones was exhausted. Even his highlights looked tired. When he was back in the room, he flopped into Dan's lap, who received him with a loud grunt, and an appreciative arm round his middle.

"We did it," smiled Jones, caressing the back of Dan's neck.

"Congratulations," whispered Dan, meeting his lips in a soft, happily tired kiss.

Carys cried more than she thought she would when Felicity went home with Dan and Jones and she went home alone. It was, it turned out, one thing to say she would do something and one thing to be truly glad to do it, and another altogether to actually _do it_ and, in spite of herself and all her intentions, feel that emptiness, the loss that followed. Claire stayed with her and held her and could not say much that was comforting in any meaningful way.

"You'll come back and visit, right?" asked Claire.

"Course I will," said Carys, blotting at the corners of her bloodshot eyes with the sleeve of her jumper. "You don't think they'd mind, do you?"

"I think they'd really appreciate it if you did," smiled Claire.

"Me too," said Carys, breaking down again. "Why is this so fucking hard? It wasn't supposed to be this fucking hard, Claire."

"I know," said Claire.

Claire held her until she tired herself out, and slept.

This was odd.

Jones was awake. He was very much awake, but the only sounds in the room were a pair of hushed voices. This time, the relative silence signaled that everything was all right. The last light of the evening had faded quietly down, and the flashing lights of the House of Jones twinkled and illuminated the stars and planets and whooshing rocket ships of the new nursery. There was an extra little safety seat in the car and a kitchen full of formula. The ashtray had been moved from the coffee table to a special space just outside the front door. Dan's guitar sat in the corner of the living room, and he promised Jones that he would learn something more gently happy than his standard sombre fare, something to play for Felicity. It felt surreal, magical, beautiful, to be home, the three of them. This was their family.

"It's time to go to sleep, it's time to go to sleep," Jones sang quietly, swaying gently from side to side.

"It's time to go to sleep," whispered Dan. Jones nodded.

He placed the tuckered-out little bundle in her bed among the planets and stars, and allowed himself to be led to the bedroom. Barely able to lift his arms far enough to pull off his shirt, he collapsed into bed, and he and Dan tangled themselves under the duvet, and he allowed himself to be carried off to sleep, while visions of melodies appeared in his dreams, set to the beating of Dan's heart.

Dan's sleep came a little less easily than Jones'. He was well out of his depth and he knew it. This was something for which no amount of experience in literature and journalism could ever have prepared him. Dan did not know how not to be terrified, but Jones' love was infinite and without condition, and he had long since learned it was best to trust him. This was good. Five years previous, Dan Ashcroft would never have seen this coming.

This was going to be the beginning of something beautiful.


End file.
